Young, Gay and Homeless in New York City (EDGE)

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by CODY LYON from EDGE NEW YORK- 12/5/2007 

On the Monday night after Thanksgiving, a freshly painted pink
walled basement room within the tremendous Church of the Intercession on West
155th Street in Sugar Hill is busy with activity. Large cots with pillows and a
puffy sleeping bag and a small storage chest lay in the middle of the
floor.

Three young people are sitting, watching and talking in a distant
corner with suitcases in tow. After everyone else has gone home, they will each
take a cot at Sylvia’s Sugar Hill - New York’s newest emergency shelter for
homeless LGBT youth.

Peggy Borgstede, president of the Interfaith Task
Force, and her partner Kathy Green were the driving forces behind this upper
Manhattan facility. It is an extension of Sylvia’s Place, a shelter for homeless
LGBT youth the Metropolitan Community Church of New York opened inside its
Hell’s Kitchen congregation in 2002. The Sugar Hill facility, which cost $4,500
to set up, can accommodate six people each night.

Borgstede said
congregations around the city remain an important part of her organization’s
mission.

"We go to churches and say, hey, open your doors and take in
some of our youth," he said.

A disproportionate number of these youth are
of color or come from poor or working class families. Carmen, 24, is a homeless
transgender woman who sought shelter at Sylvia’s Sugar Hill, told EDGE many
homeless LGBT youth she knows have been kicked out by their
parents.

"Being homeless is not some musical like "Rent" where everyone
can sing along and be happy about it," she said. "They [LGBT youth] are afraid
to go to any place for help because they’ve been taught their whole lives that
the way they are is wrong. They are afraid someone will hurt them; kill
them."

Joey, a 24-year-old student who currently attends the Fashion
Institute of Technology, said he hasn’t spoken to his father since he was 17. He
further described him as an abusive man who eventually beat him.

"Yeah,
it got physical," Joey said.

Kate Barnhart, director of homeless youth
services at Metropolitan Community Church of New York, confirmed the prevalence
of these accounts among those who seek refuge at Sylvia’s Place on West 36th
Street.

"The most common types of issues we see among our youth is...
they come out and got kicked out," she said.

Carl Siciliano, executive
director of the Ali Forney Center, agreed.

"If there are kids coming out,
and their parents can’t accept them, there has to be a sense that they are our
kids," he said. "The fact that thousands of young people are being tossed to the
street because they are gay is one of the worst crises happening in the gay
community."

The Ali Forney Center opened its doors in 2002 and is named
in honor of Ali Forney, a homeless gay teen murdered in 1997. It operates
emergency shelter and transitional housing facilities in Manhattan and Brooklyn
where residents must attend high school or work towards their GED and
demonstrate a will to work. Ali Forney also maintains a drop-in center in West
27th Street in Chelsea where psychologists and social workers are
available.

It currently houses 43 homeless LGBT youth but 120 remain on a
waiting list. Siciliano conceded resources are scarce and bureaucratic obstacles
remain a problem.

"For any system to be humane, there has to be more
supply than demand," he said. "If you have an effective program - that gets kids
off the street and connected to social service and programs - that helps them
move into adulthood in a healthy way."

The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human
Services estimates there are between 575,000 and 1.6 million homeless and
runaway youth between 12 and 24 in the United States. The National Lesbian &
Gay Task Force further concluded in a 2006 report titled "LGBT Youth; Epidemic
of Homelessness" that between 20 and 40 percent of these youth self-define as
LGBT.

An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 homeless LGBT youth are on the streets
in New York on any given night. And the National Alliance to End Homelessness
maintains these youth remain more vulnerable to violence. They suffer higher
rates of mental illness and are more likely to engage in sex work. The
Washington-based advocacy coalition further estimates sexual violence rates are
more than seven percent higher among homeless LGBT youth than their straight
peers and are more likely to attempt suicide.

Siciliano and other
activists maintain the broader movement for LGBT rights must do a better job to
address the plight of homeless LGBT youth. He pointed to the movement’s focus on
coming out in recent years but conceded many young people - especially those
whose parents are socially conservative or even homophobic - often do not take
into account the possible consequences.

"If you come out in an accepting
environment, certainly that’s more healthy than hiding your sexual orientation,"
Siciliano said. "If you come out [of an] area [where] you are like spawn, and
you are thrown out of the house that night with your belongings in garbage bags
and have no way to support yourself except through prostitution, that is a
catastrophe."

Another concern remains the lack of services the majority
of homeless shelters and health care systems provide to homeless LGBT youth.
NGLTF senior policy analyst Nicholas Ray, who authored "LGBT Youth; Epidemic of
Homelessness," maintained this absence of basic services mandates the need for
Sylvia’s Sugar Hill, Sylvia’s Place, Ali Forney and other LGBT-specific
organizations whose mission remains to help homeless LGBT youth.

"Until
we can guarantee that LGBT youth seeking help and support will receive the care
they need for mainstream agencies, then there will be an ongoing demand for LGBT
specific service providers to support our community," he said.

Carmen
agreed.

"What if you had to eat from dumpsters, had to sleep on the train
[or] had to turn to sex work to survive," she asked. "That’s not something
people want for themselves - or for their children - even if they can’t stand
what that child does."

Ali Forney Center

(www.aliforneycenter.org)

"LGBT Youth; Epidemic of Homelessness"
(www.thetaskforce.org/reports_and_research/homeless_youth)

Sylvia’s
Place
(www.homelessyouthservices.org/sylviasplace.html)

Sylvia’s Sugar
Hill
(www.homelessyouthservices.org/sylviassugarhill.html)

Cody Lyon is a New York freelance writer whose work has
appeared in a number of national daily newspapers and New York weeklies. Lyon
also writes a political opinion blog at http://codylyonblogolater.blogspot.com